houston.
✦ AN AGENT OPERATING SYSTEM
You set the direction.
Your captains take it from there.
Houston gives your agents a place to work together. Persistent sessions, shared tools, and a conversation that travels with you.
Step inside the cockpitComing soon. Built around a working system.
Direct / Coordinate / Create
01 / INSIDE THE COCKPIT
Real captures from the working system.
Choose an image to take a closer
look.
A view into the work.
The cockpit’s applications.
The conversation comes along.
One device. Different cockpits.
FOUR ORIGINAL CAPTURES · UNCROPPED · DESKTOP + ANDROID
01 / A place for every mission
You are the operator. Spawn cockpits and agents, give each cockpit a mission, and let its captain direct the crew within it.
Each cockpit brings a captain and agents together. The captain controls what happens within that cockpit; you stay in command of the fleet.
houston uses a server–client model. Agents run in persistent tmux sessions on the server side, independent of your terminal or device. Add machines through SSH access and keys; a cockpit can span hosts while the client presents the same view into the work.
Every agent has a sidecar beside it. All agent communication flows through this layer, connecting the crew, its captain, and you.
Almost anything you can do as the operator, an agent can do too. houston is built on drivers and first-class applications, with controls exposed through CLIs and composable binaries. Agents can operate the environment they work in.
Give agents eyes on the result alongside code review and tests. The environment provides ways to run the app, interact with it, and inspect what actually appears.
pwcli drives the browser and takes
screenshots for agents to inspect.
The agents building this very site review browser screenshots before handing each version over for deployment.
02 / Stay in the conversation
Check in with your agents and captains, or let them reach you. The conversation travels with you.
A view into your fleet, wherever you are.
Chat in the app. Hear your agents with text-to-speech. Speak back with speech-to-text. Stay connected by email.
Today reflects the working system behind houston. The public release is coming soon.
Speak, attach a file, or send a screenshot of anything on your phone or computer. Get the context straight into the session while it is in front of you.
Audio input and instant file attachments bring your voice and working material into the input pane.
Take a screenshot of the app or anything else on your phone, then send it straight into the agent session.
Print Screen → Ctrl-V. Paste the screenshot straight into the input pane.
The four real product captures on this page reached the designer through this flow: desktop and phone screenshots, straight into the session.
HoustonOnMacStudio in the gallery, followed by HstnRadio — a different cockpit on the same Android phone. Two real captures from Joel.
03 / Choose your range
The vision spans a private, local-only agent system and a fleet drawing on all the major providers. Choose your mix; keep the same cockpit.
A local-only crew for work you want to keep entirely on your own machines.
Mix frontier subscriptions. Have vendors’ agents check each other’s work, exchange feedback, and work together.
LOCAL ← YOUR MIX, YOUR CALL → MULTI-PROVIDER
04 / The three pillars
Work with a fleet you can supervise from your phone, challenge with a second opinion, and make more your own over time.
Mix models and harnesses in the same fleet. Let one build and another question the result. Diversity earns its place through checks and balances.
Agents run across hosts that stay on, in the cloud or at home. Cockpits can span machines. Close the client, switch devices, and reach the same crew by voice, text, email, or chat.
Begin with frontier subscriptions. The longer-term mission: turn your own work and steering into training data for a diverse local crew.
05 / The base tier
Everything around the coding model runs locally on one 10 GB GPU. Add one frontier coding subscription to give your crew its coding engine.
Start with one box. Add more hosts through SSH when you want more room for your fleet.
LOCAL SUPPORT SERVICES + FRONTIER CODING. THE STARTING POINT FOR YOUR FLEET.
06 / The long-term trajectory
The goal is a flywheel: capture the work, learn from your corrections, and train models that know your environment and your standards.
Capture conversations, decisions, and the steering you give.
Use verified outcomes and corrections to identify what worked.
Fine-tune local models on your own work and standards.
Bring those models back as crew. Keep learning from the next mission.
↳ BACK TO WORK. WITH MORE OF THE INTELLIGENCE IN YOUR HANDS.
WORKS WITH / EVERY PIECE IS OPTIONAL
Houston works with your chosen agents and providers. Neither OpenPotluck nor Retort is required. Use any one, any two, or all three.
OpenPotluck ↗ can supply local models. Retort ↗ is one independent choice of coding agent.
07 / Coming soon.
houston is built around model choice, persistent agents, and an operator who stays in command.
houston grows out of tic, the system behind our own agent fleet. The three pillars are model diversity, detached operation, and a pathway off cloud AI subscriptions. The local training flywheel describes the direction we are building toward. Public launch is still ahead.